26 Facts About Nuclear weapons

Nuclear weapons weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion reactions, producing a nuclear explosion.

Nuclear weapons bombs have had yields between 10 tons TNT and 50 megatons for the Tsar Bomba .

Since they are weapons of mass destruction, the proliferation of nuclear weapons is a focus of international relations policy.

Nuclear weapons have been deployed twice in war, by the United States against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 during World War II.

Nuclear weapons have only twice been used in war, both times by the United States against Japan near the end of World War II.

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Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons aims to reduce the spread of nuclear weapons, but its effectiveness has been questioned.

All existing nuclear weapons derive some of their explosive energy from nuclear fission reactions.

Such fusion weapons are generally referred to as thermonuclear weapons or more colloquially as hydrogen bombs, as they rely on fusion reactions between isotopes of hydrogen .

All such Nuclear weapons derive a significant portion of their energy from fission reactions used to "trigger" fusion reactions, and fusion reactions can themselves trigger additional fission reactions.

Thermonuclear weapons are considered much more difficult to successfully design and execute than primitive fission weapons.

Almost all of the nuclear weapons deployed today use the thermonuclear design because it is more efficient.

Virtually all thermonuclear weapons deployed today use the "two-stage" design described above, but it is possible to add additional fusion stages—each stage igniting a larger amount of fusion fuel in the next stage.

Fusion reactions do not create fission products, and thus contribute far less to the creation of nuclear fallout than fission reactions, but because all thermonuclear weapons contain at least one fission stage, and many high-yield thermonuclear devices have a final fission stage, thermonuclear weapons can generate at least as much nuclear fallout as fission-only weapons.

Research has been done into the possibility of pure fusion bombs: nuclear weapons that consist of fusion reactions without requiring a fission bomb to initiate them.

Nuclear weapons isomers provide a possible pathway to fissionless fusion bombs.

Some nuclear weapons are designed for special purposes; most of these are for non-strategic purposes and are referred to as tactical nuclear weapons.

Tactical weapons have involved the most variety of delivery types, including not only gravity bombs and missiles but artillery shells, land mines, and nuclear depth charges and torpedoes for anti-submarine warfare.

Nuclear weapons warfare strategy is a set of policies that deal with preventing or fighting a nuclear war.

Different forms of nuclear weapons delivery allow for different types of nuclear strategies.

From this point of view, the significance of nuclear weapons is to deter war because any nuclear war would escalate out of mutual distrust and fear, resulting in mutually assured destruction.

Some analysts have argued that nuclear weapons have made the world relatively safer, with peace through deterrence and through the stability–instability paradox, including in south Asia.

Kenneth Waltz has argued that nuclear weapons have helped keep an uneasy peace, and further nuclear weapon proliferation might even help avoid the large scale conventional wars that were so common before their invention at the end of World War II.

Over 500 atmospheric nuclear weapons tests were conducted at various sites around the world from 1945 to 1980.

Radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons testing was first drawn to public attention in 1954 when the Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb test at the Pacific Proving Grounds contaminated the crew and catch of the Japanese fishing boat Lucky Dragon.

Detonating large numbers of nuclear weapons would have an immediate, short term and long-term effects on the climate, potentially causing cold weather known as a "nuclear winter".

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The International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear weapons War believe that nuclear war could indirectly contribute to human extinction via secondary effects, including environmental consequences, societal breakdown, and economic collapse.